


Wear Your Heart On Your Skin (in this life)

by orphan_account



Series: Drabbles [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 6 year age difference, AU, M/M, tatto artist!Derek, time lapse fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles first showed up in spring, left as summer started, and came back in the early fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wear Your Heart On Your Skin (in this life)

**Author's Note:**

> Anon on tumblr requested "tatoo artist!Derek" and this happened.

Derek looks up when the bell over the door swings and chimes, and the first words out of his mouth are “No, you’re the sheriff’s son.”

The kid looks instantly put out. “I have permission?”

“No.” Derek says again, jotting down the last of his budget for the shop. It’s a slow day, as days at a tattoo parlor in a small town tend to be. “I don’t do it for _kids_.”

“I dunno about that man,” the kid swaggers forward awkward and goofy, “you’re really doing it for me.”

Derek can’t help the gut-busting laugh he lets out. “Nice try,” he tells the dejected face looking back at him. “Try again in three years.”

The kid pouts. “Four.”

Derek raises an eyebrow. “You’re fourteen? And you want a tattoo?” Derek stands, leaning over the counter with a skeptical look. “You’re not in a gang are you? I’ll call your dad right now if—?”

“No.” The kid’s voice isn’t sly, or fun, or  _kid-like_  anymore. It’s hollow and harsh. “Sorry for,” he gestures to the shop, “bothering you. I’ll just go.”

Derek waits until the kid has one foot out the door. “Come back any time.” He doesn’t know what compels him to say it. “I won’t,  _can’t_  give you a tattoo. But, if you ever..” He stays fixated on the kid’s amber eyes. “If you ever need a place to hang out, the door’s open.”

The kid grins; it’s still sad and small, not nearly as vibrant as the electric-nervous grin he’d been sporting as he walked in. “Okay.”

And he’s gone.

)

Derek doesn’t see the kid for a year and a half. Not that he’s counting, but he knows when the year-mark passed and that instead of the same wet spring air that trailed behind the kid the first time, he brings in the crunch of autumn leaves. He looks only a little older, the biggest difference is that instead of the gray sweatshirt he was wearing before, the kid is in a Superman t-shirt, a shades of blue plaid overshirt, and the same gray sweatshirt that looks a little worse for wear.

“Hey.” The kid announces his presence, and Derek’s notices that the store was eerily silent before he arrived. “Long time no see.”

“I’m still not giving you a tattoo.” Derek answers instead.

The kid pouts, but it isn’t as deep or pronounced as it was when he was fourteen. “Not even after I’m 16 with my dad’s permission?”

“No.” Derek enunciates as best he can. The kid shrugs and falls into one of the chairs just beyond the front desk.

“So do you just sit here all day and wait for people from the pub down the road to waddle in and beg for Wolverine riding a Pegasus on their ass, or something?”

“I don’t tattoo drunk people.”

Stiles makes an interested noise. “You turn away people?”

Derek scoffs. “Of course. Unless they can provide a legitimate reason for wanting the tattoo, I’ll turn them away.”

“Legitimate as in…?”

“As in, not because ‘it’s the cool symbol from that show I love.’ Legitimate meaning it’s special to you, deep and powerful and important.”

The kid is looking at him with a disconcerting sort of awe. “Do you have tattoos?”

Derek nods, but doesn’t elaborate, and the kid doesn’t ask.

)

“Stiles.”

Derek looks up. “Huh?”

“Stiles.”

“Are you trying to ask me who inspires me as a tattoo artist?”

The kid makes a frustrated noise. “My name is Stiles.”

Derek ‘ah’s. “I’m Derek.”

Stiles nods, and looks out towards the snow milling about in the road. “Can I stay for a bit?”

Derek nods. “I told you,” he says, “hot chocolate?”

Stiles grins and strips off the scarf—that’s as hideously plaid as the same shirts he’s been wearing for the three years he’s been hanging in Derek’s shop. “Please.”

)

“But, dude.”

Derek sneers. “Get out of here, Whittemore, before I call your parents.”

The kid, seventeen but a senior, sneers right back and storms out. Derek doesn’t even mourn the loss of a customer, because some teenage boy who wants to get the ‘love of his life’s name tattoo’d on him deserves to be told no for once. Just as the door swings shut after Whittemore, though, it swings back open as Stiles sweeps into the room.

“Happy graduation.” Derek tells him, though they haven’t seen each other since that last autumn. “Finally here to get that tattoo?”

Stiles looks thoughtful. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s legit enough.”

Derek’s interest is piqued—never has Stiles told him what he wanted that first day when he was fourteen. He wonders, suddenly and idly if Stiles only comes in here when people aren’t around on purpose.

“I’m going to Berkeley.”

Derek nods. “Cool.” He says, because he’s no adult and he’s not going to tell Stiles ‘good job’ since that isn’t what he needs to hear.

“How much would it cost?”

Derek levels him with a soft-hearted gaze and tells him, “nothing.”

)

It’s barely a week later, as the heat of the summer starts to seep into every ounce of California life, that Derek bends Stiles over the couch in the backroom and fucks him senseless, fingertips delicately tracing the tattoo where it’s covered in plastic to heal. Stiles had walked in that fateful late afternoon claiming to need help applying lotion to the ink, even though it’s along his rib and side, a perfectly reachable spot for someone dexterous like Stiles.

But Derek had just said “come to the back with me” and it’s not long before he’s coming inside Stiles with a grin and a half hearted slew kisses laid along the knobs of Stiles’ spine.

When they’re still flushed and out of breath but detached from each other, Derek really does ask to look at the tattoo; it’s fine, he observes, progressing nicely. As he examines it, he reminds Stiles for the umpteenth time to take care of it while he’s away. Stiles promises and links their fingers together to trace along the bouquet etched into his skin.

A small ball of leaves and vines that swirl across pale, mole-painted skin; Eglantine Rose, Primrose, Marigold, and Geranium blend and mix and a dazzling arrays of pinks and yellows and oranges. Derek even kisses it once before Stiles pulls him back up for another round.

)

Derek doesn’t see Stiles for a while after that, and is as bothered by it as he isn’t.

)  
  


Three years later, as he finally has Jackson Whittemore sprawled across a chair, doped up on Vicodin and head lolling as he grips Lydia Martin’s hand, Stiles walks in and just watches. He watches the careful swirls of gun on skin as Derek presses Jackson’s birth parent’s names into his shoulder, running over bones and dustings of hair.

He wipes it clean not long after, and admires the font Lydia chose—strong, but vulnerable, much like Derek assumes Jackson is, to her.

They pay and take a list of instructions, and then it’s just Stiles and Derek alone. “Business doing good?”

Derek nods, cleaning up and stripping off the latex gloves. “Scott got his team number on his chest.”

Stiles snorts, and Derek takes in what college has done to him. Which, for the record, isn’t a lot. He’s maybe taller, which means he’s surpassed Derek, and instead of the dirty gray Vans he wore as he left Derek three years ago, he’s got burning red Converse All Stars on, so vintage and fitting. He’s got a scarf on, even though it’s barely entering fall, but it suits him. Aside from the red shoes and blue jeans, he’s dressed in an mish-mash of browns and caramels and chocolates, and it suits him.

“How’s the tattoo?”

Stiles grins. “It’s perfect,” he says, just like he did when Derek finished it. “Any new ones for you?”

Derek shakes his head, though he had entertained the idea. He considered getting something to forever remind him of Stiles, but nothing seemed fitting, nothing legitimate enough. So instead, he’s unchanged aside from more wrinkles and steadier hands. “What brings you back?”

“I dropped out.”

Derek’s eyes widen in surprise.

Stiles shrugs. “College isn’t for me. I. I made friends but it wasn’t the same.”

“Most of your friends are gone,” gone from Beacon Hills, to college and sports and families.

“You’re still here.” Is Stiles’ response as he steps closer until he’s in the only other chair behind the counter. “My dad’s still here.” Retired, but still home.

“Is that enough?”

Stiles seems to think about it, and Derek thinks back to the fourteen year old kid who walked in, hair awkward between buzzed short and shaggy long; eyes wide and sad and alluring, which won’t ever cease to be the creepiest thought Derek’s ever had—he was twenty at the time, and that’s just not okay.

But as Stiles motions him closer, he realizes it’s okay now. Sure, he’s old, twenty-seven to Stiles’ twenty-one. But, it’s okay now. He can do this.

“I have an idea.” Stiles says before they can kiss like Derek had planned. “For another tattoo.”

Derek cups his face, fingers pressing into skin he’s missed more than he realized. “Okay.”

)

“Did you just spend those three years of college looking up the meanings of flowers?”

“I’ve been doing that since I was thirteen.”

Derek lifts himself to lean on an elbow, staring at Stiles’ face shoved into a pillow, tired and sex-sated. “Yeah?”

“My mom died when I was fourteen.” Stiles tells him. “She liked flowers and I. I wanted to find the perfect bouquet for her.” Stiles shakes with a heaving sigh. “But before I could get it she—she died.”

Derek strokes through hair that’s just a little longer than before. His fingers dance down to the Gorse that’s imprinted on the back of his neck, matching the one on the inside of Derek’s own wrist. “So you came to me.” Derek adds.

Stiles sits up, and nods. “And I just kept coming back.”

Derek smiles, and settles in closer. “I’m glad.”

**Author's Note:**

> Flower meanings:
> 
> Geranium: gentility  
> Primrose: eternal love  
> Tagetes: pain and grief  
> Eglantine Rose: a wound to heal
> 
> Gorse: love in all seasons


End file.
